When they had hurried to the train station with their violin cases, they had drawn almost as many stares as they would on any normal day when their hair was to their knees and sheeting...

I can’t imagine you give apologies, Ten had said before, and she’d been right, but Liraz thought that she would now, She would apologize for Savvath. If her voice was her own. If it wasn’t...

It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry ‘Monster!’ and looked behind him

I…I sang,” she whispered, “if that matters,” and Karou felt her heart pulled to pieces. This Misbegotten warrior, fiercest of them all, had crouched in an icy stream bed to sing a chimera soul into...

Is that all souls are for? For when we die?” “No. They’re for living, too.

I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings...

When you are young, hone your craft and write shorter pieces instead of novels, because it’s really hard to finish a novel.

Having hope was like dangling himself over a chasm and putting the rope in her hands. She could annihilate him if she wanted to.

You already have?

It was the only lullaby she would ever sing, and it was sung in Hell.

This wasn’t a person, Zuzana thought, this was greed wearing skin.

It didn’t matter; by now she knew she loved him in any skin. In her book there was another tale – one of the original eighteen – of a dragon who had a human wife,...

My face responds without authorization from my brain, so the resulting smile feels like the biggest, most unguarded, goofiest smile I’ve ever unleashed in my entire life. I didn’t even know my face could do...

Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It’s who you want to be, your most powerful self. Write your books. Finish them,...

It’s not like there’s a law against flying.””Yes there is. The law of gravity.

You’ve got to have, like, a lentil for a soul to hate wiener dogs.

[She] had heard it said that there was only one emotion which, in recollection, was capable of resurrecting the full immediacy and power of the original—one emotion that time could never fade, and that would...

I’ve always been a reader and a writer.

Be a Samurai.Because you just never know what’s behind the freaking sky.

Let me tell you something about me. I love vengeance like normal people love sunsets and long walks on the beach. I eat vengeance with a spoon like it’s honey. In fact, I may not...

As for Ellai, she told her sister what had passed, and Nitid wept, and her tears fell to earth and became chimaera, children of regret…

And if redemption was self-serving, coming as it did ribbon-tied to what he wanted most in life? For once, Akiva’s shame wouldn’t rise to the bait. He wanted what he’d always wanted, and he’d better...

She wanted to be free, and if she could never be free, at least she wanted to be brave – brave enough not to sell herself, no matter what the payment, or the cost of...

Until a few days ago, humans had been little more than legend to him, and now here he was in their world. It was like stepping into the pages of a book — a book...

You just mingled saliva with the most beautiful boy ever to tread the hallways of Saint Pock’s. Saliva. There’s DNA in saliva. You’re like carrying his cells in your mouth like one of those weird...

I know it’s not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you’re not the only one with troubles.

What do you think I live on, rainwater and daydreams?

…looking up at the stars, he had accepted life as a medium for action. Something to wield like a tool. One’s own life: an instrument for the shaping of the world.

I started blogging in 2006 when I had sold my first novel but it had not yet been published, in those anxious months in between while I learned the whole process.

My tiny scary friend is coming

To eat or not to eat, that is the question: whether ’tis Nobler in the stomach to suffer the Slings and Arrows of outrageous Hunger (while keeping mouthparts in pristine kissing condition) or to take...

I write because, as wonderful as life is – and it is truly wonderful – it isn’t enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write.

What can a soldier do when mercy is treason, and he is alone in it?

It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks...

His eyes are blue, and blue eyes up close are a celestial phenomenon: nebulae as seen through telescopes, the light of unnamed stars diffused through dusts and elements and endlessness. Layers of light. Blue eyes...

The biggest challenge for me has been in coping with my perfectionism. I have a stiflingly hard time moving forward in a project if it’s not ‘just right’ all along the way. The trap I...

Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.

The audacity to love. Do you know what a gift that is?

She’d spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened–apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn’t a...

When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.

Do you know what they’re called? They’re the Shadows That Live, Zuze. They’re assassins.” “Like me,” said Zuzanna cheerfully.

I’m not looking for fate. I’m seventeen. I’m looking for kissing, and to move forward a few paces on the game board. You know, do some Living. (With my lips.)

Home. the word always had air quotes around it in her mind. She’d done what she could to make her flat cozy, filling it with art, books, ornate lanterns, and a Persian carpet as soft...

My phone buzzes. It’s from Karou: a list of conversation openers that I won’t be needing. —a) Hi. I’m Zuzana. I’m actually a marionette brought to life by the Blue Fairy, and the only way...

There is intimacy in pain. Anyone who has comforted a sufferer knows it—the helpless tenderness, the embrace and murmur and slow rocking together as two become one against the enemy, pain

Perhaps Fate laid out your life for you like a dress on a bed, and you could either wear it or go naked.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you’re trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give...

The dead,’ she said. ‘And we have plenty of dead between us, but the way we act, you’d think they were corpses hanging on to our ankles, rather than souls freed to the elements. […]...

There is the past, and there is the future. The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other. We live poised on that second as it’s hurtling forward—toward what?

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn’t stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have...